One way of removing volatile organic contaminants from industrial exhaust stack emissions is through the use of a carbon filter that absorbs the volatile organic contaminants prior to passage of the emissions to the atmosphere. Such carbon filters are supplied with heated gas from a carbon desorption heater to remove the volatile organic contaminants from the carbon filter by a desorption process. This type of system is conventionally constructed with the carbon filter as a rotatable wheel that is rotatively driven between emission and desorption partitions spaced angularly from each other so as to provide the removal of contaminants from the emissions during one angular portion of rotation and to provide the desorption of the contaminants by the heated air at another angular portion of the rotation. After passage through the carbon filter, the heated air has a concentration of volatile organic contaminants many times greater than that of the exhaust stack emissions such that the volatile organic contaminants can be more efficiently incinerated prior to passage of the products of combustion to the atmosphere.
Carbon desorption heaters presently used with industrial paint spray booth emissions cleaning are not particularly efficient or easy to use since such heaters are assembled from numerous components at the factory site due to their relatively large size. Such inefficiency and the cost involved in assembly of the heaters at the factory site necessarily must be born by the cost of the resultant painted product.